Yes, I know — the term “mission improbable” brings up around forty-five thousand results in Google. I am, very decidedly, not the first person to think of it. Last week I went with the title “Grapes of Wraith”, which was somewhat poorly received in the comments section. One commenter improved it, though, changing the title to “Gripes of Wraith.” I think we can all agree that that’s a much better choice. So. Let’s try again this week. I’ll need someone to play the part of “person who cares a little too much about the title of Avery’s post” and someone else to play “person who does the extra two seconds of thinking that Avery could have done and comes up with a pun that actually makes sense.”

Your reward will be fruit punch and pie, and international fame.

A consistent response to my last post was the assertion that the inclusion of a ghost in Infinite Jest broke no established rules, since entirely impossible concepts had been appearing since the very start of the book. One could guess from the title of this post that I’m going to argue that some of those concepts are not impossible, just highly improbable. One would guess correctly.

Giant (and skull-less) babies are mentioned as being a result of the concavity, or rather the result of the annularized fusion waste that is dumped into the concavity. I was hopeful (in the kindest way) that I would find, through Googling, some evidence of elephantitis as a result of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, but came short (much like the non-giant babies of Japa– heck, I’m not even gonna finish that sentence. I already feel bad just thinking it.) However, studies in the use of x-radiation on gestating mice have produced creatures with hydrocephalus — the scientific term for “dude, check out that huge head.”

One could extrapolate that the radioactive waste produced by annular fusion could have exponentially greater results, creating the giant babies and feral hamsters of IJ. One could extrapolate that, and I’m going to. So there. Totally probable.

Dymphna, the blind tennis player who uses sonic balls (page 17), would seem to present a problem to those trying to convince themselves of the plausability of this book. But anyone doubting the chances of a vision-less tennis pro needs only to read this entirely scholarly People magazine article about “The Boy Who Sees with Sound” to become convinced that in the land of the blind, the kid who can echolocate using mouth clicks is King. Dymphna? Probable-phna.113

The idea of a pan-Americas currency is based on the Euro, the coin of the realm for all of Europe. Except England, because the fears of racists concerns of nationalists have kept it from invading our shores. If it can work (kind of) in Europe, it can work in America.114 O.N.A.N? Seems like it could happen.

Do you have a problem with the idea of wheelchair assassins powerful enough to strike terror into the hearts of all sensible humankind? If you think dudes in chairs can’t be hardcore, then you’ve never seen the awesomeness that is Murderball (boring name: wheelchair rugby.) The terrifying blending of man and machine that creates muscle-bound wheelchair athletes is all too plausible, friends.

Lastly, I’ve heard tell that Infinite Jest is about an entertainment that is too enthralling, too enticing, and cannot be escaped once encountered. Whilst anyone with a child and access to Dora the Explorer knows that human beings are more than capable of becoming almost pathologically addicted to television, the idea of a film so powerful that you spent the rest of your life craving continual exposure to it seems silly.

But. We know enough of Himself’s work that we can figure out that the effectiveness of Infinite Jest(the film) relies on the distortion and/or manipulation of light. Of course, we hopefully all know of the dangerous effect light can have on the human brain. If there’s part of the noggin that sees light and decides to throw a fit, who is to say that there may not be another band, or wavelenth, or kind of light that can trigger pleasure centres in the brain to such an extent that all thought from then on is based around the desire for more of that stimulation?

Sure, we haven’t come across that kind of light yet, but David Foster Wallace predicted Skype, human beings who were born to play tennis, and Alcoholics Anonymous.115 Maybe he predicted the discovery of addictive light, too.

I mean, he probably didn’t. But how else am I meant to conclude this post? With a frickin’ emoticon?

🙂

27 Comments

Here’s the thing, though. *IS* there actually a ghost? He’s supposedly talking to J.O.I., but then again, he’s also seeing Joelle with wings and no clothes. The only thing that’s not really explained is how Gately is able to see the future (him with Hal, digging up James’s skull from beneath a pile of annularized trash). And even this as an “improbable” explanation: when we look at stars, we are seeing the past–due to the speed at which light travels, it takes a very long time to register things that have already occurred. In that sense, James, a master of lens, may have come up with one that is somehow able to see things “faster” than light (okay, well *VERY* improbable), and which might explain why a “wraith” (or figure of the past) needs to stand so still in order to have someone in the future actually *SEE* them.

Alls I’m saying is, nothing is quite what it appears to be, and when we use words like God or wraith, we’re really just doing what we always do–throwing around words in an attempt to explain the things we do not (cannot) understand.

I really enjoyed last week’s post, and I’ve been thinking about the suspension-of-disbelief issue while I’m reading. I’m a little behind, so I have yet to see how this wraith thing works out, but I think I came to terms with the plausibility issue in the earlier parts of the book. There have been several events/issues that didn’t seem plausible to me, including Marathe’s wife missing a skull. I’m not sure it even fits the timeline of waste in the concavity (unless she’s still a child), let alone the physical plausibility. I’ve tried to think of it as sort of a dramatization for effect.

I have about 100 pages to go to finish the book, and I’m still waiting to see how it all works out. The plausibility issue has come up several times for me, and your posts have given me more to think about. Thanks for that.

Let it be said that ostensibly gigantism in the Concavity/Convexity has nothing to do with toxicity; on the contrary, it’s because annular fusion sucks up all the toxins that there are no limits to growth and babies/hamsters/plants get huge, blah blah blah.

Damn it, I forgot about that. I had a vague memory that it was something like that. I do call b*llsh*t on that one, though, and will insist that every single scientist in the IJ world has gotten that wrong, and radioactive waste is — instead — to blame.

but even if there is a minute possibility factor associated with these clearly improbable outcomes, it still feels to me like sheer stubbornness to insist there’s a material distinction to be made in terms of the experience of “the suspension of disbelief” while reading the novel. skull-less wife acceptable but wraith over the top? sorry, it sounds like you just didn’t like the book–and I think it would be better if you just went with that rather than trying to make it about some pretty thin boundary between the truly impossible and the merely really really really really really really improbable.

I think you’re misunderstanding. For me, the point is that the argument doesn’t really hold water. Because of that, I have a feeling that it’s something of a red herring–the problem isn’t whether ghosts are possible within the diegetic frame of the novel. The problem is that Avery Edison seems to be irritated by this novel on many levels, and the ghost is an outlet for expressing that irritation.

I suppose we can all agree to disagree on the question of whether ghosts are a leap from skull-less adult human beings. But what are we doing here if not expressing opinions? Does the evidence that we use to back them up matter? Is it automatically an aggressive gesture to counter someone else’s opinion with your own? I think it’s good to be pressed to give better and more in-depth explanations of personal interpretations–we NEED to understand one another, and if it’s taboo to vigorously disagree, then something has gone terribly wrong. And in that sense, I think seeing the exchange of opinions in a lively manner as a hostile act is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I certainly have been frequently irritated by Infinite Jest, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love it like a family member. Exactly like a family member. (I don’t know if Avery feels or will feel the same way.) I am not saying, “Don’t argue.” I am saying, “I am unconvinced by an argument from your estimation of someone else’s estimation.”

About a year after my father killed himself, I had the most intense experience. He came to me and explained that he was in a good place. (I was sure he had gone to Hell.) When I told my mother the next day, she told me that she also had a very intense experience that night. He had visited her and they had relations… I avoided sleeping for almost a year after that by keeping the t.v. on in my room and putting all the Trivial Pursuit cards in numeric order*. So I had NO problem with the wraith.

Avery, I hate to be a pedant, but us Brits get really annoyed when you guys accross the pond conflate “England” with “United Kingdom”. In using the former, you ignore our influential celtic brothers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, all of whom retain the Pound too.

Normally I would let this error pass, but since you use it in the context of political unions, its a howler.

If it helps, think of the UK as a sort of O.S.S.B.I (Organisation of States Stranded on the British Isles), although obviously that has the potential to piss off the Republic of Ireland.

Oh. Um. Hm. Yes. Right. Sorry. That’s a stupid mistake, and I shouldn’t have made it. Especially because I’ve lived in England my entire life. Except for the time when I lived in Scotland. Where I was born.

Avery,
Some would assert that the transfer of actual, material knowledge from one person to another without speaking contact is no more surreal than the various items that you assert have some basis in reality. Look into some of the writings on collective consciousness, for example. If combination of collective consciousness and, perhaps, absorption of words and events from conversations heard while unconscious can impart knowledge that seems to come from no identifiable source, DFW’s use a fever-induced vision of a wraith to bring the knowledge to Gately’s attention does not seem so “out there.”